So why have we as an industry failed
on First and Fourth Amendment protections? Because
we're not doing some basic political tasks that the Second
Amendment crew is doing right.

Fan-friendly vintage products
Firearms sellers understand and use the endowment
effect. For example, users
are happily keeping and using M1911
pistols, based on a century-old design by John
Browning. And even buying newly manufactured
ones. When Grandpa goes to the store for a vintage
product like he's used to, he can get one, not a forced
upgrade to flat design.

Should IT companies devote valuable staff to
maintaining vintage versions? Not necessarily. The largest
producer of M1911 pistols is a company called
Kimber, founded more than 50 years
after Browning's death.
It's hard to imagine a IT company throwing an old
product over the wall instead of killing it. The
conventional wisdom is to do everything possible to
prevent competition with old versions. But now that
the market is mature, we can reconsider that.
Keep the fangirls and fanboys happy, and they'll be writing letters
to Congress instead of THIS NEW VERSION
SUX0RZ!!1! rants.

The results of that quarter-to-quarter thinking are coming
home to roost. Pursuit of lock-in
can be great for sales, short-term, but locked-in
users can't switch vendors as
fast, which makes every vendor's OODA
loop unnecessarily slow. Thanks to the decision to
pursue
lock-in, we've gone from
innovation to stagnation and squabbling, and just
making
everyone rebuild their stuff over and over
for different
platforms.
Meanwhile, the firearms
business is letting users swap in independently
developed parts while keeping their platform
investments. It's news
when an IT person makes noise about We
do not break userspace! but mature markets take
that for granted.
<pullquote>The
IT industry isn't a baby any more. So it's time
to stop raising it on the steroids of forced
upgrades and the crack of lock-in, and move it
up to the whole-wheat goodness of sustained customer
value.</pullquote> Worst pull quote ever.
You're
basically saying that you'd give steroids and
crack to a baby. Also, gluten moms. —Ed.

Product-membership bundling
The Second Amendment industries have the
NRA, and we've got the
EFF. Even accounting for the fact that the NRA is
a century older, the EFF is relatively small compared
to the user population it serves.

IT vendors could easily add EFF membership to product
and service bundles. Yes, the EFF does call out
some vendors on problematic programs, but see stick
together on the basics above. As the industry grows
up, we'll be putting less and less importance on
infighting, and more on staying in business for the
long term.

Conclusion With the Second
Amendment safe for the foreseeable future, and firearms
vendors sitting on more orders than they can
fill, (thanks largely to NRA publicity—that
product-membership bundling was worth it, wasn't
it?) a lot of Marketing and Public Policy people
there are probably getting a little bored. Time for
the IT business to hire some.